Show HN: Mr2.js – Expose local servers to external networks

by txthinking • 7 years ago

52 12 7 years ago

ovi256• 7 years ago

This is a neat idea, but still requires running a local executable. To ease adoption, a web app would be better.

So how about a ngrok like service where you just open a page to forward local traffic ? The vulnerability we've seen yesterday, "A web page can see your local servers", suggests it's doable. The webrtc code needs to open a HTTP connection to the local server. JS code would proxy all requests coming through an external hostname to this local server. Is this doable ?

"I can see your local servers" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20028108

antoniomika3• 7 years ago

Shameless self plug

That is the exact reason I made sish (ssi.sh). It uses ssh to do local port forwarding and can be self hosted with authentication. It's open source[0] and the only thing you need locally is SSH (which is included by default on most systems).

[0] https://github.com/antoniomika/sish

tootie• 7 years ago

Neat! This is like a self-hosted version of ngrok? So you'd just need a public host somewhere and then you can tunnel in. I've been doing some edge computing stuff recently with Windows, so I'd love to try this with RDP.

olafalo• 7 years ago

This is cool! I came up with something similar for hosting a few personal sites from my home network, except I did it the other way around - I built a docker image that does the SSH tunneling part. The external host is just a cheap droplet with GatewayPorts set to yes in the sshd config. A benefit of doing it this way is that you don't even have to expose localhost; I have Caddy running in another container in a docker-compose.yml file, so I can forward it directly with:

  ssh -R 80:caddy:80 -R 443:caddy:443

So all the networking happens within the network created by docker-compose.

herohamp• 7 years ago

This sounds like a fun summer projects. I'll take a look

obituary_latte3• 7 years ago

What is the purpose and/or novelty of this project? Just a simple http server? Or that it’s js?

mbreese2• 7 years ago

If you are developing a service / webapp on a local machine, you can use something like this (or ngrok) to make it publicly accessible to demo or test.

The novelty of this, I think, is that it provides both client and server programs. So that instead of paying for a service like ngrok, you can deploy this on your own. At least, that was my takeaway.

obituary_latte3• 7 years ago

Ah interesting. I guess I've been spoiled with built-in apache all these years (and terrified of the idea of opening up LAN to public). Thanks!

Show HN: Mr2.js – Expose local servers to external networks

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